What's up guys? I figure it's about time I posted a new short story. I wrote this one over the past week or so and managed to finish it up today. I think it might have been a little longer? I'm not sure, but overall I'm happy with it. Feedback is always appreciated!

White Sunburn

Liza twisted the tube until the last bit of paste fell on to her finger. She quickly applied it to her nose and across her brow.

Finals are approaching, which means only one thing: the end of the semester. Heading into summer means starting up new projects and making lots of money. Chances are I'll be moving to working full time at my job (currently at Mountain Kim Martial Arts Center). Whether that holds into the new semester is up in the air unfortunately. That's the glory of registering for new classes though right? Everything is up in the air.

As for projects, there is plenty to take care of. As always there are my writing projects. Most of the ones I manage to complete are short stories, but at least it's something. In fact I should have another one coming up shortly. With luck I'll have it done before the 15th of May because that's when the deadline for the Sword and Laser Anthology is and I'd like to enter.

I'm also working with my friend Zack and his film company Hand Me Down Films. For now my role is basically marketing, which should be fun. It's something I have a decent grasp on and hopefully through this I can hone that grasp into something resembling skill.

And lastly, there are secret projects in the works. Everyone loves a good secret, no?

While I've only dabbled in filmmaking here and there, I have a bunch of friends who plan on making a career out of it. On Tuesday they put together their latest project, entitled "Oh, Confucius". I'm sure they would appreciate you giving it a watch. It's only about nine minutes long and it's really funny.

By now many - if not all - of you have heard about the explosions in Boston. It's a terrible terrible tragedy. Personally, I don't know anyone in Boston. But I visit the city one a year to attend PAX East. I met plenty of IGN Bloggers in Boston. I attended meet and greets with IGNers in Boston. I drank with the IGN crew in Boston. I've met plenty of people in Boston that I've come to know and care about. While they may not be in the city itself, it's hard to imagine the place where all those memories were formed was attacked.

I don't have much else to say other that I hope that everyone is safe and those who were injured survive. My thoughts go out to everyone in Boston. Whoever did this will be caught, so please just focus on helping each other and not on pointing fingers at the easiest target. There are better uses for your time.

Since I got back from PAX I've been trying to save up money. Whether it be for a car, or to attend PAX Prime this August. To do that, I need to not spend as much money as possible. That means only buying video games I REALLY want, making lunch from home, etc.

It also means going through my backlog and finishing everything I've got. That way, I'll spend my time playing those games and reading those books instead of going out and buying new things. At least that's the thought so far. Hopefully it continues to hold up.

So far my backlog has been moving very slowly. Most of the games I've been playing through were left alone for a reason. One of those games is RAGE. Anyone remember it? It was made by id in 2011 and was supposed to be all about vehicles and stuff like that. Unfortunately the game feels like it was made back in 2005 right after Half-Life 2 came out. Sure it looks great, but that's about all it has going for it. It's slow and terribly paced so far. The engine is terribly optimized as well. Everything has this weird texture blurriness when I immediately look at it, then it renders out the higher texture. It's ugly and makes my framerate chug (as a result of that, I've dropped down the graphics and that seems to have fixed the problem for now).

My hope is that the rest of my backlog will be easier than this. That said, I tried out The Binding of Isaac last night and damn is it tough! Really rewarding, but exceptionally difficult. I guess I shouldn't have expected anything less from the guys who made Super Meat Boy.

As for reading, I've gotten back into reading the Dark Tower series. Last year I'd read through the first four books, but hit a snag on book five. I'm determined to get through the rest of it. Thankfully I wasn't too far into book 5 already so I haven't had much to catch up on. That said, the book is a little over 900 pages long... And the books only get longer. So that'll be fun. But I've heard they're worth it so I'm not worried.